"Berger gave many years in the public service"..for which he was paid, both in monetary and in psychic terms. Why is working as a government official "public service" any more than, say, growing food as a farmer, or transporting it as a railroad employee? It's time to start challenging these pieties.

1) Very often, the people who hold high-level public jobs do so at great personal cost, since they generally could command 2-5 times the salary in the private sector;

2) If you want to challenge James's statement, you might start by questioning Berger's efficacy when he was working under Clinton, since there were several key ways that administration dropped the ball on terrorism and helped set up the conditions that fostered 9/11.

Maybe they *could* get 2-5 times the salary in the private sector, but:

a)Some people are more motivated by power/influence than by money...is there anything particularly praiseworth about this?
b)In many cases, the "public servant" gets the money anyhow, after he retires, since he is now in demand for a variety of lobbying-related jobs.

My point is simply that devoting one's life to the pursuit of political power and influence does not necessarily make on a Mother Teresa.

It is not clear how many copies of the report exist. Nor is it clear why Berger was so focused on the document. If he simply wanted a copy, it seems that taking just one would have been sufficient. But it also seems that Berger should have known that he could not round up all the known copies of the document, since there were apparently other copies in other secure places. Whatever the case, the report was ultimately given to the September 11 Commission.

The answer to York's puzzlement is that there apparently were multiple drafts of Clarke's critique. It's not uncommon for these things to get blanded down a bit in staff exchanges before the "official" version is transmitted -- but those drafts usually are kept for matters this important.

Berger was trying to get hold of all the drafts, including the early ones that reportedly are scathing about events under Berger's term as NSA.

Side note: The Washington Post is doing a great job covering the story. The New York Times is blaming the whole thing on George Bush. Really. They're spinning it so hard they're likely to hurt themselves.

Aw, I'll bet they talk a lot about the "timing" issue. My feeling is that if the Democrats really want to control when these sorts of things are revealed, they could simply exercise some control over when and how they steal top-secret documents. That would surely help.